Clear insights into what the cash management banks are going to focus on over the next two years in their development of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) was revealed in Aite’s recent Impact Report. It is based on Aite Group interviews with product managers, line-of-business heads, and digital channel managers at Asia-Pacific, European, and North American banks as well as with fintech providers, which focused on the banks’ strategies for deploying APIs. (It also leverages a late 2016 Aite Group email survey of and telephone interviews with 21 major international banks.)

The responses for the question, “How is your bank prioritising the development of APIs for three key functions”, were: 

Source & Copyright©2017 - Aite Group

Two respondents identified other functions which have moderate priority: bank account management, and liquidity management.

How can banks remaincompetitive?

Although, Aite believes that “Forward-looking banks will start opening application programming interfaces as a competitive tool to collaborate with their corporate clients in business-to-business transactions that span all global corporate banking processes.” They raise an important concern that some banks may not have the money, time or focus as they are having to focus on security. Instead, they wonder whether, “In today’s competitive market, can collaboration with fintech companies be the most effective and efficient way forward?”

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CTMfile take: Your Cash Management bank’s strategy and focus on APIs matters. Maybe it is not a matter of ’Sink or swim’ (see Chris Skinner’s blog), but it does matter because, if you choose the right bank in the API revolution (it is a revolution as Chris points out), your cash management and payment processes will be much simpler and more efficient, and cheaper.